10 Songs that Sound Like Other Songs

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Imitation is the best form of flattery

Sometime bands look up to other bands so much, they end up sounding almost identical to them. It happens. These are 10 songs that drew, maybe a little too much inspiration from others and ended up fairly similar.

Weezer‘s “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To” sounds strikingly similar to “A Town Called Malice” from The Jam.

Kurt Cobain was originally apprehensive about releasing “Come As You Are” (1992) as a single because the riff sounded pretty much identical to “Eighties” (1984) by Killing Joke. Killing Joke were angry about it and one rumour says they did sue but withdrew after Kurt Cobain’s death.

The funny thing is, the riff from both songs sound like The Damned‘s 1982 song “Life Goes On”.

Remember how much you liked “The Real Thing” off Phoenix‘s album Bankrupt? It’s because it has the same drums as “When Doves Cry” by Prince.

Sublime‘s “What I Got” has pretty much the same vocal melody as “Lady Madonna” by The Beatles. The album this song belongs to came out two months after the death of Bradley Nowell.

HAIM got the drums for “The Wire” from…

Chris Martin‘s a fan of Kraftwerk and wrote Ralf Hutter a letter before Coldplay released their album X & Y begging to use a sample from “Computer Love” in their song “Talk”. Instead of keyboards, they used a guitar though.

We don’t play either of these artists but I thought this was pretty shameful the first time I heard it.

Oasis have a bit of a history with plagiarism. Stevie Wonder got 10% of the royalties from “Step Out” because it’s so similar to his song “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”.

When Jet came out with “Are You Gonna Be My Girl”, everyone compared it to “Lust For Life” from Iggy Pop. Iggy said when he was writing that song with David Bowie, they were ripping off Mo-town beats.

Like Jet, when The Strokes came out with “Last Night”, everyone compared it to “American Girl” from Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. Tom Petty said after seeing an interview where they admitted to ripping off his song, he wasn’t mad.